{"id":3976,"date":"2015-12-01T19:09:08","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T08:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.businesslegions.com\/blog\/?p=3976"},"modified":"2015-12-04T13:08:54","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T02:08:54","slug":"guide-adding-wordpress-plugin-wordpress-org","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businesslegions.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/01\/guide-adding-wordpress-plugin-wordpress-org\/","title":{"rendered":"GUIDE TO ADDING YOUR WORDPRESS PLUGIN TO WORDPRESS.ORG"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I was involved with creating a WordPress Plugin and had the responsibility to uploading the plugin to WordPress.org. It was my first time doing this and was a bit overwhelmed with the whole experience. I did manage to get it published and so I decided to write about this experience so that I could remember all the steps and what to watch out for next time I upload another plugin.<\/p>\n

I’m not a developer, so I cannot really guide you with all the coding and technical aspects of your WordPress plugin but all I can say is if you intend to upload your plugin to WordPress.org then use a developer that has the experience and knowledge of developing plugins to meet their strict guidelines. The WordPress.org review team manually looks at the code and will provide you with the necessary guidance to get it approved. Basically, if the code is not up to their standard then it won’t be approved hence the reason why its best to use a developer that can code to their standards. As an example: Names of functions<\/p>\n

# Generic function (and\/or define) names<\/em><\/p>\n

All plugins should have unique function names, defines, and classnames. This will prevent your plugin from conflicting with other plugins or themes.<\/em><\/p>\n

For example, if your plugin is called “Easy Custom Post Types”, then you might prefix your functions with ecpt_{your function name here}. Similarly a define of LICENSE would be better done as ECPT_LICENSE. You can use namespaces instead, however make sure that those also are unique. A namespace or class of ‘MyPlugin’ is NOT actually all that unique, you see.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are plenty of resources out there (like this one<\/a>) for developing WordPress plugins but it seems a lot of developers don’t have the time to read all this. It just makes everything so much easier if the coding standards were used from the start.<\/p>\n

SUBMITTING YOUR PLUGIN FOR APPROVAL<\/h2>\n

Once you’ve built your WordPress Plugin and are ready to upload this to WordPress.org you will need to complete a form found here (you need to register for a username and password):<\/p>\n

\"Upload<\/a><\/p>\n

The name of the plugin is VERY<\/strong> important as this cannot be changed later on. For example, the plugin that I worked on as called Social Wall Widget<\/a>. If I decided to change this name later on to Social Wall, this would not be possible as the URL will always be https:\/\/wordpress.org\/plugins\/social-wall-widget<\/p>\n

The only solution would be to resubmit another plugin with that name. So carefully think about this plugin name!<\/p>\n

One thing you need to make sure is to have a completed readme.txt file in your ZIP file. There is a readme.txt validator<\/a> that checks the contents of the text file. Here’s an example of the results from the validator:<\/p>\n

\"WordPress<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can see from the submission form screenshot, there is approximately 85 plugins being review queue, so you will need to be patient<\/strong>. The WordPress review teams are not robots so it does take time to review each plugin.<\/p>\n

For Social Wall Widget plugin\u00a0it took about 1 day before it was approved and had access to the SVN repository. You will receive an email similar to this:<\/p>\n

\"WordPress<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SVN stands for Apache Subversion and it’s a software versioning and revision control system that WordPress uses. This was also the first time working with SVN and will go through the procures in using SVN later on.<\/p>\n

UPLOADING YOUR PLUGIN<\/h2>\n

So you’ve had your WordPress Plugin approved… that’s not the end of it. The next step is to upload the plugin to the WordPress.org hosting platform that uses SVN. As mentioned previously I’ve never used SVN and had to do a bit of researching for the best way to use this. WordPress does provide you with instructions on how to use SVN<\/a>. However, these instructions are only applicable if you have a Unix operating system. I did have a Unix VPS (Virtual Private Server) but didn’t have SVN installed so I ditched the idea of using this VPS.<\/p>\n

USING TORTOISE SVN<\/h3>\n

Instead of using the Unix VPS I ended up just using my\u00a0Windows laptop and a tool called Tortoise SVN<\/a>\u00a0– I wanted to avoid installing SVN tools and upload the files to the Unix VPS. \u00a0Tortoise SVN is and open source tool (Yes it’s FREE) and was created especially for the Windows OS. Just download and follow the default settings to install the software.<\/p>\n

\"TortoiseSVN<\/a><\/p>\n

After successfully installing Tortoise SVN, you will need to create a folder on your local computer to store all the plugin files. This folder will be used as a local repository that will be synched with the WordPress.org plugin repository.<\/p>\n

\"Tortoise<\/a><\/p>\n

Right Click on the Directory name and you will see the TortoiseSVN.\u00a0Just above it you will see SVN Checkout. Click on that.<\/p>\n

\"Tortoise<\/a><\/p>\n

The Repository will be created. Click on OK to create the default folder structure.Make sure in the URL repository you type the URL supplied by WordPress in the approval email.<\/p>\n

\"Tortoise<\/p>\n

The program will now\u00a0create 4 folders (assets, branches, tags, trunk) like below:<\/p>\n

\"Tortoise<\/a><\/p>\n

The purpose of each folder is as follows:<\/p>\n